Australia: Regions, Cities & Travel Guide

What is Australia known for?

Australia is famous as the only country to hold an entire continent to itself, the island nation known as the Land Down Under. Its name calls up the Outback, the bush and long open beaches, along with cities such as Sydney set on one of the world's great harbours. Indigenous cultures reach back tens of thousands of years across the continent.

Space defines it. Few countries carry so much open ground between their ocean coasts and their red interior deserts.

Where is Australia?

Australia is the only country to occupy a whole continent, the mainland of the Australian continent together with the island of Tasmania and many smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest country on earth. The land is also the flattest and driest inhabited continent, a vast island set alone in the Southern Hemisphere and circled on every side by ocean.

Deserts hold the interior. Tropical rainforests run in a green band along parts of the coast, while the dry red heart of the Outback stretches for enormous distances between the far edges of the country. Distance is the defining fact here.

The continent spreads across a width that dwarfs most nations, its coasts thousands of kilometres apart across the open interior. Sydney sits on the eastern seaboard, on one of the most famous harbours in the world, while the bush and the Outback fill the country behind the coastal cities. Tasmania lies off the southern edge, cut from the mainland by a strait.

Ocean frames all of it. From the tropical north to the temperate south, the Australian continent carries as wide a spread of landscapes as any country holds.

What is the history of Australia?

Australia holds one of the oldest living human histories on earth. Indigenous cultures reach back tens of thousands of years across the continent, long before any contact from outside. The modern nation is far younger.

The separate colonies federated in 1901 to form the Commonwealth of Australia, binding the mainland and the island of Tasmania into a single country. That act drew the colonies of the continent together under one government for the first time. Since then the country has been shaped by waves of immigration from around the world.

People arrived from every continent, settling the coastal cities and the ports along the seaboard, and Sydney grew into the largest of them on its harbour. The old Indigenous inheritance and the newer arrivals together define the Land Down Under. Deep time runs beneath it all.

Australia measures its human story in tens of thousands of years, even as the modern federation counts only from 1901.

What is Australia like?

Australian culture draws on two deep sources, the ancient and the arrived. Indigenous cultures stretch back tens of thousands of years, among the oldest continuous cultures anywhere, and their languages and traditions remain woven through the continent. Global immigration built the rest.

People from around the world settled the country over the modern era, making Australia one of the most multicultural nations on earth and filling its cities with many tongues and kitchens. Most of that life gathers on the coast. Australia is heavily urbanised, its people drawn to the seaboard cities such as Sydney rather than the dry interior of the Outback and the bush.

The beach and the open air run through the national character. Yet the red centre still shapes how the country sees itself, a people of the coast who know the desert at their back across the Land Down Under. Old and new hold together here.

What is the climate of Australia?

Australia spans many climates, from the tropical north to the temperate south of the continent. The interior runs hot and dry, a desert heart where the Outback bakes under long clear skies. Rain is scarce inland.

Along the coasts the weather softens, with tropical rainforests in the north and milder, wetter conditions toward Tasmania and the southern edge. The continent holds as broad a climatic range as its size suggests.

How do you get to Australia?

Australia sits far out in the Southern Hemisphere, and nearly every visitor arrives by air. The island continent shares no land border with any other country, so no road or rail reaches it from abroad. Flights land first at the coastal cities.

Sydney, on its famous harbour, is among the busiest points of entry, and from the seaboard the long internal routes fan out across the continent toward the Outback and beyond. The distances inland are vast.